UFC 140 preview: How can Lyoto Machida beat dominant champ Jon Jones?

Roughly eight months after the UFC broke box-office records at Toronto’s Rogers Centre with UFC 129, the promotion returns to the city in a venue that’s more business as usual for its live events.

UFC 140 features light-heavyweight champ Jon Jones’ third fight and second defense of his title this year when he meets former champ Lyoto Machida on the top of the card.

Additionally, former heavyweight champ Frank Mir attempts to get back into the title picture when he meets onetime interim heavyweight champ Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, and Tito Ortiz moves one step closer to retirement when he meets Nogueira’s twin brother, light heavyweight Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.

UFC 140 takes place Saturday at the 19,000-seat Air Canada Centre in Toronto. The event’s main card airs live on pay-per-view while preliminary-card fights air live on ION Television and stream on Facebook.

Jones (14-1 MMA, 8-1 UFC) is a tad less than three months removed from a dominant win over former champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson at UFC 135, which brought to two the number of former titleholders he’s put away. In March, he violently dispatched Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 128 to take the title.

Machida (17-2 MMA, 9-2 UFC) is No. 3 if Jones is successful on Saturday night. The Brazilian briefly was expected to fight Jones’ former training partner, Rashad Evans, at UFC 133 when prospect Phil Davis dropped out with an injury, but he lost the spot when he requested a payday on the order of middleweight champ Anderson Silva.

That gutsy move was expected to move Machida to the back of the line. But when Evans injured his thumb after a long-awaited return to the octagon against Tito Ortiz, which delayed a grudge match with Jones nearly a year in the making, he got the call to fill in. He earned a spot high in the 205-pound division when he knocked out Randy Couture with a leaping front kick at UFC 129. That snapped a two-fight skid against the likes of Rua (by knockout) and Jackson (by close decision).

Although pundits gave Machida a good chance of beating Jones after UFC 135, oddsmakers have not shown the same faith. One popular line gives him a 20 percent chance of winning the fight. His reputation for elusiveness seems no match for Jones’ unpredictability.

In a feature that’s standard to all of Jones’ fights, he’s coming in with advantages in height (3 inches) and reach (10.5 inches). Those gifts allowed him to hit Jackson with a steady stream of kicks and jabs long before he could be caught with a counter. Machida has but one inch longer reach than “Rampage.”

There are key points for Machida to attack. He’s obviously got to get inside on Jones to do damage, and he’ll need to find a way to create angles where he can get in and get out before a kick or spinning attack comes his way. But perhaps a better strategy than going tit for tat on the feet is the idea of closing that distance to get a trip takedown. Putting Jones on his back may be the best way to neutralize everything the champ is known to do well, and it’d test him in areas where he hasn’t in competition. Jones’ long legs may still give Machida a reason to worry if he manages to get top position on the mat, but at least he won’t be fighting at the disadvantage that’s sunk other fighters.

Jones, of course, may use a clinch situation to initiate one of the explosive upper body throws that characterize his past in Greco-Roman wrestling, and if he’s able to use his elbows from top position, Machida will be in for a long and painful night. The idea of a striking battle is not a bad plan if he does exactly the same as he did to Jackson, keeping the former champ off-balance at all times with a variety of blows. The key will be to keep Machida in front of him at all times and not to fall prey to the setup of the karate-based fighter when he circles to get opponents to give chase before reeling off a quick punch or kick.

The bout gives Nogueira a chance to validate an earlier claim that his loss to Mir by TKO was caused in part by a staph infection that made him severely ill before the bout, and Mir the chance to prove his first win wasn’t a fluke.

It’s a meeting that almost didn’t happen. After suffering a knockout loss to future champ Cain Velasquez and then spending almost two years on the bench due to multiple surgeries on his hips, Nogueira’s career was given mere months to live when he took on the vastly younger Brendan Schaub at UFC 34. It quickly became clear that he hadn’t lost his abilities in the layoff when he earned a first-round knockout, which, given Schaub’s hot-prospect status, gave him a claim to a top-tier matchup.

That turned out to be Mir, who took offense to Nogueira’s claims that called into question the legitimacy of his win. The former champ believes he deserves a shot at current champ Junior Dos Santos if he wins on Saturday night, though the winner of this month’s UFC 141 headliner between Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem has been earmarked for the No. 1 contender’s position.

Nevertheless, the winner of Mir vs. Nogueira II could put himself next in line for a belt in 2012.

Ortiz nears the sunset against “Lil Nog”

After one of the best comeback wins of the year, Tito Ortiz’s Cinderella story had to end.

When Rashad Evans stopped him in the second round of their second meeting at UFC 133, it was clear Ortiz wouldn’t be fighting for a title ever again. While inspiring, his submission win over Ryan Bader at UFC 132 was little more than a good night in a long line of bad ones.

Ortiz (16-9-1 MMA, 15-9-1 UFC) has talked openly about retirement in advance of his bout with Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (19-5 MMA, 2-2 UFC), a fight that was supposed to headline UFC Fight Night 24 before a cut forced Ortiz to withdraw from the event. He’s requested a retirement bout with Forrest Griffin, who outpointed him at UFC 106, to avenge the earlier decision loss.

That leaves him in an interesting headspace for Nogueira, a veteran who’s hit the skids himself and may face a pink slip with a third consecutive loss after setbacks to Bader and Phil Davis.

Is Ortiz already checking out? It’s hard to say for sure, but it sounds like it. The former UFC champion has been competing in MMA for 14 years, and besides his win over Bader, he hasn’t had much to celebrate about his career recently. While he remains a legend in the sport, he’s also become a symbol of its past.

If anything, the Nogueira bout offers him the chance to do what he does best, which is take down opponents and grind them into dust. Nogueira’s takedown defense has never been his strong point, and if Ortiz can resist the urge to stand with the former amateur boxer, this should be his fight to win, assuming he isn’t battling with some health ailment as he has so many times before.

In other main-card action, Claude Patrick (14-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC) steps in on short notice to face welterweight Brian Ebersole (48-14-1 MMA, 2-0 UFC), who was scheduled to meet Rory MacDonald before an injury scuttled the matchup. Patrick brings a three-fight win streak into the fight while longtime vet Ebersole has back-to-back UFC wins on his current resume.

Also, onetime featherweight challenger Mark Hominick (20-9 MMA, 3-1 UFC) gets back on the horse after a failed bid for champ Jose Aldo’s title when he meets the aggressive Chan Sung Jung (11-3 MMA, 1-0 UFC). The Korean fighter recently got back on the winning track with a submission win over Leonard Garcia following back-to-back losses. Hominick’s loss to Aldo broke a five-fight win streak. It’s his first fight without longtime trainer Shawn Tompkins, who died earlier this year of a heart attack.

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